Today, Congress at the behest of the President, is deliberating the use of American fire power (as opposed to invasion or start of war consent). Approval of use of American firepower to punish the Assad Regime in Syria for its use of chemical weapons on its own people is a curious use of Congress. Why is that?
Our representatives can look at the intelligence or not, but if they look they can not disclose either the content or the good faith of the dossier on Assad's conduct of suppression of the uprising in Syria. So we are left the public speeches of Congress which are scrubbed and sanitized and which leave us the American people in the dark.
It happened with the George W. Bush Administration's jingoism and lead up to the Iraq War premised on weapons of mass destruction that in fact the Hussein Regime of Iraq did not have (in so far as production of such weapons in the lead up to the start of war and the search for weapons that followed could or would ever establish). So, asking the American people to authorize a punitive action on the Assad Regime is wrongheaded.
The correct forum for every police action in world affairs is the flawed by design provisions of international law, specifically the United Nations. Disclosures in that forum by the United States can help establish that the removal of Assad from power is for the greater good of the people of Syria itself. Even then, the mayhem that results in the takedown of the regime will result in untold consequence for the people of Syria. The President wants to commit to a punitive action, one that must not have as its goal the removal of the regime from power. Why? Because the power vacuum that will result will be filled by jihadist and extremist elements who will exploit the opportunity to further not the cause of Syria and its people but their own insane delusions of power and right.
But then why ask the question of the American people? One is reminded that the government secrets are supposedly secret because of actual national security concerns for our undercover agents and those they come to exploit for America's cause. The President is on the hotseat by his own "good offices." Which leaves us where? The real ethical dilemma is Russia's and Turkey's dilemma. Each country has a sad history of pogroms and genocide to account for not just in days of the Russian and Ottoman Empires, but in the modern era of Republics. They are the power brokers who need the status quo in Syria for their own internal and national security interests.
So the real question is where does American power and influence stop, or should it stop? If this is about preservation of Israel, then take out the enemies of Israel. If this is about the Christian or non-Alewite Muslim populations of Lebanon and Syria, they will be decimated by America's firepower (much as the Christians of Iraq have suffered so adversely from America's invasion of Iraq). We know the chemical weapons and control centers will be housed in churches, schools, and mosques. How good are we with pin point use of fire power? Ask the 100,000 plus dead civilians of Iraq (but do not ask the survivors of these 100,000). My President seems bound and determined to excuse the death of innocents as the essential product of taking action, what is called euphemistically, not terrorism per se, but "collateral damage." No President wants to signal that the American Empire has its limits.
Time, Mr. President, to call you on this one and your true motivation for using American fire power for purposes of "credential" enhancement of American power in the Mid-East. I voted for you twice, but I'm still very much the critic of the power brokers of Washington, D.C., of which you by definition have become.
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